Mr. Chute, of Chute Hall, is also an improver and architectural reformer, his efforts being directed towards the abolition of thatch in favour of slate, an idea which has proved more fortunate in his case than in that of the great-grandfather of the present Lord Kenmare. The great estates of the Lord Chamberlain have curiously enough been equally damaged by the care and carelessness of his ancestors. His great-grandfather was disgusted at the condition of the town of Killarney, and offered any tenant who would build a decent house with a slate roof a perpetual lease of the land it stood upon and the adjoining garden for a nominal rent of four shillings and fourpence per annum, without other important conditions. The result has been that Killarney can boast of as filthy lanes as any in London or Liverpool. The ordinary process, the same as that which formed the hideous slums between Drury-lane and Great Wild-street, now happily demolished, has gone on in Killarney. Tenants under no restrictions gradually converted their gardens into lanes of hovels, and made money thereby, and the result is a concentration in Killarney of filth which would be better distributed on the side of a mountain, and which is under the nose of a landlord who is powerless to apply a remedy. Not long ago Lord Kenmare sought to establish what is called here a Temperance Hall, for the purpose of giving lecturers and entertainers a chance of amusing the people; but the proprietor of the ground, after a prolonged negotiation, declined to surrender his property. Killarney is in the hands of the dwellers therein, and a very poor place it is. Conversely Lord Kenmare's property suffers severely from the recklessness of the ancestor who flourished in the "comet year," famous for hock. That spirited nobleman, averse to the nuisance of dealing directly with tenants, leased a large portion of his property to middlemen in 1811 for forty-one years or three lives; that is to say, for a minimum of forty-one years with expansion to three lives. The effect of this fatal policy of giving away all power of supervision and management has been made manifest in the past, and is yet visible on those portions of the estate the three-life leases of which have not yet fallen in. The gross rental of Lord Kenmare's estates in Kerry, Cork, and Limerick, amounting altogether to 118,606 acres, is 37,713l., against Griffith's valuation of 34,473l., but the distribution of this sum is very unequal, especially since the rents of the yearly tenants were raised in 1876, in some cases to the by no means unfair extent of 50 per cent. above the poor-rate valuation.